After spending a lot of time with the unix command line you can get used to simply using the ls command to list the files in the current directory, it can be annoying when the option is suddenly not there on the Windows. Using the cd command to traverse through directories is the same, so it is a bit jarring when suddenly ls does not work.

Fortunately I was able to find a simple way to fix this from Stack Overflow. This approach maps the ls command to the dir, and is so simple that the file to do so can be created with a single statement on the command line.

echo dir %1 > %systemroot%\system32\ls.bat

This statement will create a new bat file that is always visible and will replace ls with dir behind the scenes. Now you can just use the ls command without having to think about what operating system you are running.

While writing to a file is easy in C# applications, for apps written in JavaScript things are a bit more complicated. Especially if you want to write to a file outside of the app’s sandbox. Fortunately this can be solved using Microsoft’s WinJS libraries.

var exportData = "String of data";
var savePicker = new Windows.Storage.Pickers.FileSavePicker();
savePicker.suggestedStartLocation = Windows.Storage.Pickers.PickerLocationId.documentsLibrary;
savePicker.fileTypeChoices.insert("CSV", [".csv"]);
savePicker.suggestedFileName = "Export.csv";

savePicker.pickSaveFileAsync().then(function (file) {
    if (file) {
        Windows.Storage.CachedFileManager.deferUpdates(file);
        Windows.Storage.FileIO.writeTextAsync(file, exportData).done(function () {
            Windows.Storage.CachedFileManager.completeUpdatesAsync(file).done(function (updateStatus) {
                if (updateStatus === Windows.Storage.Provider.FileUpdateStatus.complete) {
                    //file saved
                } else {
                   //file not saved, failed for some reason
                }
            });
        });
    } else {
        //file not saved, canceled by user
    }
});

This will allow Cordova apps to write out to a part of the operating system where users can easily access the files.